A power grid is a combination of interconnected electricity networks that encompasses electricity generation, electricity transmission and electricity distribution. The power grid is a highly complex collective system typically composed of a large number of diverse and complex interacting power grid components. The power grid may refer to a continent's electrical network, a regional transmission network, or simply describe a sub-network, such as, a local utility's transmission and distribution network.
Since the power grid is a collection of diverse, interacting and interconnected power grid components and electricity networks, operation of one or more of the power grid components and the electricity networks in the power grid may be dependent or effect the operations of other power grid components or other electricity networks in the power grid. For example, a failure of one of the power grid components (completely or partially) generally shifts the load of the failed power grid component to nearby power grid components. Therefore, the nearby power grid components are pushed beyond their capacity and become overloaded resulting in a failure of the nearby power grid components. Accordingly, the failure of a power grid component may result in failure of other power grid components and combinations of the failures may result in a large power blackout. Typically, a failure of a power grid component that may trigger failure of other power grid components is referred to as a cascading failure or a cascading fault. The cascading failures may include cascading overloads, failures of protection equipment, transient instability, reactive power problems, voltage collapse, software failures, communication, terrorist acts, vandalism, operational errors, and the like.
Typically, individual operators identify and assess the cascading failures or contingencies in the power grid or a portion of the power grid. In addition, the individual operators try to promptly perform adjustments in the power grid for a continued and reliable operation of the power grid when a potential contingency or a cascading failure is identified. The operators generally rely on alarms generated by an energy management system (EMS), data generated by supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), and contingency analysis tools for identifying the potential contingencies or cascading failures. However, the identification of the potential contingencies or the cascading failures requires trained and skilled operators, sophisticated computers and communications, and careful planning and design. Also, the individual operators are accountable for the contingencies and cascading failures in a few portions of the power grid, such as, densely populated metropolitan areas, lines of the power grid that share a common structure or a common failure mode. Therefore, the individual operators may not identify large cascading power blackouts that may occur due to combinations of certain cascading faults or failures.
Hence, it is highly desirable to develop a self-healing power grid that is more reliable. Furthermore, there is a need of a power grid that may identify one or more cascading faults. Moreover, there is a need of a self-healing power grid that may identify or predict potential power blackouts and may act appropriately to save the self-healing power grid from the potential power blackouts.